Journal of Experimental Psychology: General © 2018 American Psychological Association 2018, Vol. 147, No. 4, 591–596 0096-3445/18/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000427 BRIEF REPORT Power Increases the Socially Toxic Component of Narcissism Among Individuals With High Baseline Testosterone Nicole L. Mead Roy F. Baumeister University of Melbourne University of Queensland and Florida State University Anika Stuppy Kathleen D. Vohs Erasmus University Rotterdam University of Minnesota The corrosive effects of power have been noted for centuries, but the self-related changes responsible for those effects have remained somewhat elusive. Narcissists tend to rise to—and abuse—positions of power, so we considered the possibility that positions of power may corrupt because they inflate narcissism. Two pathways were considered: Powerholders abuse their power because having power over others makes them feel superior (grandiosity pathway) or deserving of special treatment (entitlement pathway). Supporting the entitlement pathway, assigning participants to a position of power (vs. equal control) over a group task increased scores on the Exploitative/Entitlement component of narcissism among those with high baseline testosterone. What is more, heightened Exploitative/Entitlement scores among high-testosterone participants endowed with power (vs. equal control) statistically explained amplified self-reported willingness to misuse their power (e.g., taking fringe benefits as extra compen- sation). The grandiosity pathway was not well supported. The Superiority/Arrogance, Self-Absorption/ Self-Admiration, and Leadership/Authority facets of narcissism did not change as a function of the power manipulation and testosterone levels. Taken together, these results suggest that people with high (but not low) testosterone may be inclined to misuse their power because having power over others makes them feel entitled to special treatment. This work identifies testosterone as a characteristic that contributes to the development of the socially toxic component of narcissism (Exploitative/Entitlement). It points to the possibility that structural positions of power and individual differences in narcissism may be mutually reinforcing, suggesting a vicious cycle with personal, relational, and societal implications. Keywords: narcissism, power, testosterone, corruption, entitlement Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000427.supp For centuries power has been viewed as a corrupting force. influence of power have remained somewhat elusive. The so- Despite the recent surge in psychological research examining cially toxic behaviors of the powerful resemble those of nar- the cognitive, motivational, and behavioral consequences of cissists, so we investigated the possibility that social power power, the self-related changes that explain the corrupting increases narcissism. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Nicole L. Mead, Department of Management and Marketing, Faculty of (SSHRC; Nicole L. Mead) and the Erasmus Research Institute of Business and Economics, University of Melbourne; Roy F. Baumeister, Management (ERIM; Nicole L. Mead and Anika Stuppy). The content School of Psychology, University of Queensland, and Department of is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily Psychology, Florida State University; Anika Stuppy, Department of Mar- reflect the official views of the SSHRC or ERIM. We thank Cristina Ion keting Management, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus Univer- and Victoria Cazacu for assistance with data collection and Bram Van sity Rotterdam; Kathleen D. Vohs, Department of Marketing, Carlson den Bergh and Jon Maner for feedback on an earlier version of the School of Management, University of Minnesota. article. The experiment reported in this article has not been shared at profes- Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Nicole sional meetings, nor have the data been disseminated. L. Mead, Department of Management and Marketing, Faculty of Busi- This work benefited from the support of a doctoral fellowship from ness and Economics, University of Melbourne, Level 10, 198 Berkeley the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Street, 3010 Victoria, Australia. E-mail: [email protected] 591 592 MEAD, BAUMEISTER, STUPPY, AND VOHS Two Possible Power-to-Corruption Pathways power inflates the Exploitative/Entitlement component of narcis- sism among those with high testosterone. An experiment tested Narcissism consists of two separate components: entitlement these hypotheses by measuring individual differences in circulat- and grandiosity (Brown, Budzek, & Tamborski, 2009). Entitlement ing testosterone and manipulating whether participants believed is the desire to be recognized and treated as special by others. they had power (vs. equal control) over a group task. Grandiosity is relatively more intrapersonal and is characterized by an arrogant sense of self-importance. Method The maladaptive behaviors and interpersonal problems that characterize abusive powerholders, such as aggression, cheating, Participants and Procedure and counterproductive workplace behaviors, have been linked with the Exploitative/Entitlement component of narcissism (for a re- Previous studies examining the interaction between manipulated view, see Grijalva et al., 2015). Hence, increased entitlement and hierarchical position and measured testosterone levels have used exploitation seemed a viable explanation for the corrupting influ- inconsistent sample sizes. We therefore used a rule of thumb of at ence of power. We label this the entitlement pathway. least 50 participants per cell (Simmons, Nelson, & Simonsohn, An alternative possibility is that power corrupts because it 2013). By the end of recruitment (the day we reached 200 partic- makes people think they are better than others. We label this the ipants), 206 participants (98 female) completed the study in ex- grandiosity pathway. Conceptually, this pathway is similar to the change for monetary payment. The study was approved by the theory that power corrupts through inflated self-esteem (Kipnis, school’s institutional review board. 1972) because the grandiosity components of narcissism are cor- To increase the believability of the role-play power manipula- related with self-esteem (whereas the Exploitative/Entitlement tion, we arranged for participants to arrive in groups for a team- component is not; Emmons, 1984, 1987; Watson & Biderman, dynamics study. The experimenter brought the group to a room 1993). that was labeled group room and was set up to facilitate a group The evidence for the link between power and self-esteem has interaction. Participants were told they would complete a team task been mixed, however. Recalling a time of power (vs. recalling together there. Then they were led to individual cubicles, where yesterday’s activities) increased self-esteem (Fast, Gruenfeld, they were asked to complete initial measures. In reality, those tasks Sivanathan, & Galinsky, 2009). Yet giving people actual power constituted the study procedures. All study materials are public (vs. equal control) over a group task did not change self-esteem (Mead, 2017). (Kipnis, 1972; Wojciszke & Struzynska-Kujalowicz, 2007). Thus, self-esteem did not explain the corrupting influence of power Testosterone (Kipnis, 1972). Given that the Exploitative/Entitlement component of narcis- Participants completed a testosterone briefing session 24 hr sism has been linked with a wide range of socially toxic behaviors, before the main experiment. The session aimed to ensure that we favored the entitlement pathway. Nevertheless, we examined participants would provide a clean saliva sample during the main both possible pathways by examining how power changes scores experiment (see the online supplemental materials). on the narcissism components that capture grandiosity and entitle- To minimize circadian fluctuations in testosterone, we con- ment. ducted the experiment between 12 (noon) and 3 p.m. (Mehta, Jones, & Josephs, 2008). Saliva was collected before the power Testosterone manipulation. Participants drooled 1.5 ml of saliva through a straw into a sterile polypropylene SaliCap tube. After collection, saliva Although the notion that social power corrupts has anecdotal samples were frozen at Ϫ20 °C. Samples were shipped on dry ice and scientific support (e.g., Kipnis, 1972), not all people misuse to Clemens Kirschbaum’s laboratory. Sampling tubes were centri- their position of power. We focused on testosterone as an attribute fuged at 10,000 rpm for 5 min. Salivary testosterone concentrations that may predispose people to the corrupting influence of structural were measured using commercially available chemiluminescence- power. Leaders with high testosterone were prone to use their immuno-assays with high sensitivity (lower limit of detection ϭ position of power to improve their own outcomes at the expense of 1.8 pg/ml; analytical range ϭ 1.8Ϫ760 pg/ml). Six participants This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. others (Bendahan, Zehnder, Pralong, & Antonakis, 2015). If nar- provided unusable saliva samples. The inter- and intraassay coef- This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user